12 May 2006

WHY I RAIL AT THE MEDIA

This is a classic, non-political example of why the mainstream American media is scorned and ridiculed by anyone with a brain to see beyond their transparency and ability to make mountains out of pebbles.

An article in yesterday’s Newsday — a major Long Island paper for those of you not familiar with it — tells parents “what they need to know” about the Internet site MySpace.com.

The article — which essentially has no info in it other than relating who owns the site (Rupert Murdoch) and who sold the site (two now multi millionaires) — reeks of negativitiy but manages to relate two stories having to do with young people killing other young people.

One has to do with some NeoNazism discovered at a school in East Hampton along with threats of violence and the other an alleged plot in Kansas in which five students were arrested. In both cases the spectre of a Columbine High School-style massacre were alluded.

What the writer and newspaper failed to note was that — if anything — MySpace should have been rewarded for providing a forum in which the assholes involved were discovered. This somehow escaped the reporter, the editors, et al.

Meanwhile the article could have been summed up with a few words: Parents know what your kids are doing on the Internet.

But then that would demand responsibility and punishment on someone’s part. And God forbid THAT happen.

No comments: